Top court won't hear repeat abuser's bid

BOWDEN, ALTA. - A man who made headlines in 1989 for trying to stop his
girlfriend from having an abortion has failed in an attempt to overturn an
order requiring him to tell his parole officer whenever he strikes up a
relationship with a woman.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear Jean Guy
Tremblay's appeal of a judge's order that was made in 2000.

Jean Guy Tremblay (file
photo)

Three justices of the court who had been considering his application
dismissed it without awarding him legal costs.

Tremblay is scheduled to get out of the Bowden Institution in Alberta on
July 2, when he will have finished serving a five-year sentence for the
latest in a series of 14 attacks on women.

Most of them have been romantic partners whom he has threatened, stalked,
unlawfully confined or brutally assaulted.

His history of violence goes back to at least 1989, when his
then-girlfriend, Quebec woman Chantale Daigle, decided to abort the baby she
was carrying rather than bring a child into an abusive relationship.

Enraged, Tremblay won a court injunction to prevent the abortion, in a
ruling that fanned the fires of the country's ongoing debate about a woman's
right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy. The Supreme Court
eventually overturned the injunction.

Tremblay headed back to Canada's top court to challenge a long-term
supervision order that a judge imposed on him in 2000 when the Crown sought
to have him declared a dangerous offender.

"A long-term supervision order is really designed to make sure that
the individual is a minimal risk to society, as opposed to just being out
there unsupervised," said Doug King, a criminologist at Mount Royal
College.

The order means that Tremblay will have to live under certain conditions
set by the National Parole Board for 10 years after he is released, even
though he will have served his full sentence.

Mike Halko of the National
Parole Board.

He will have to undergo psychological counselling, he must live in a
halfway house in Ottawa for at least 90 days, and he can't contact any of
his victims or their families.

But the major condition is that he has to report all relationships with
women to his parole supervisor.

"Essentially it requires him [to report] whenever he enters any
relationship with an adult woman, whether it's casual or intimate, whatever
it might be," said Mike Halko of the National Parole Board.

Critics say that will be virtually impossible to enforce.

"How can a probation officer or anyone else be assured that in fact
they will report any relationship they become engaged in?" said Mary
Ann Sanderson, who works with a Calgary women's shelter. "It seems
quite a nebulous sentence."